1. Matthew 13:13-15. The tone of Jesus here seems to point to the fact that he does not want certain ones to believe.

It’s a matter of perspective. His perspective, not ours. Recall that Nicodemus was received into Jesus’ confidence, and as best as He could Jesus explained to him the new birth. Something seems to have stuck with that man, and we see him lovingly aiding Jesus in his humiliation at the end of the Gospel story. This was an exception. But the point is made by this exception. Jesus Christ receives sinners who acknowledge they are sinners. Jesus Christ receives honest inquirers to this day. But those who are full of pride and decide they are not interested in Jesus regardless of what He says or does will receive the truth in veiled form, scratching their heads throughout their earthly life, then writing off Jesus as not worth the trouble. It is these of whom Jesus speaks here.

Remember that there is nothing unfair about election. All those who are lost made the decision to disobey God, to neglect and dishonor Him, to trust their own way of salvation. What God does over and above that is not the point. The point is that those who go to everlasting loss go there by their own doing.

2. Matthew 8:28, Mark 5:2. Was it one man, or two, that met Jesus and needed deliverance from demons?

Questions that deal with Biblical integrity do not seem as interesting as those which deal with everyday life and holy living. But if the Scriptures are contradictory and not worthy of our trust, how can we lean upon them for that holy life we need? Let’s examine this difficulty.

Matthew says there were two men. Mark and Luke talk about only one.

Perhaps in those short two statements I have helped solve the riddle. Matthew says two. The other writers only talk about one. The fact that only one was talked about does not cancel the possibility of two men being present.

We cannot know now why Mark, who followed Peter’s account of things, quite possibly, and Luke, who depended on Paul as he received things from the Lord and/or other apostle, were fascinated by the one man, but it could well be that he was the spokesman. It is interesting to note in that regard that Mark and Luke record the interaction between Jesus and that speaker, whereas Matthew gives a more general accounting of the events.

Two different men with two different perspectives, both accurate. One steps back and catches the whole scene. One leans in and hears the very words of authority from the Master’s lips. Front row seats.

3. Luke 8:30-36. Why did demons ask to be spared the abyss, and why did Jesus “answer their prayers”?

Here is an extended response from a former publication of mine.

Jesus, merciful to fallen angels, His sworn enemies? Is that what we must read into this very strange story? Perhaps not. The book of Psalms is clear about how God will deal with enemies that have gone too far and are lost forever. No mercy. No kindness.

What was it in the demons’ thinking that caused them to be so terrified in the first place? Our best understanding is that hell, or the “bottomless pit”, or as here, the “abyss”, is an incredibly awful place, far beyond our powers of comprehension. The rule of hatred and shame and fear and mercilessness. No shred of caring for the ongoing torment. No hope of parole or release. An eternal prison.

Yet for now, the demons who had inhabited the man we call “Legion”, the demoniac, were living in luxury by comparison to their coming fate. And they knew it. They also knew that, even though Lucifer is their “master”, the One before them now trumped Lucifer any day of the week. If He said “Go to the abyss and stay there,” they must go. It may not have entered their thinking that the waters into which they might be cast were only another entry point into Hell.

But we have a set-up here for another of those cases where what Satan’s workers wants, namely a little reprieve from their return to prison life, happens to be how God is best served also.

In the first place, if they are sent directly to the Pit, no one in the vicinity knows about it. They will know that the man is suddenly set free, but their whereabouts will be a mystery. So in a public display of the power and glory of God, Jesus grants their request. When the demons hit the pigs, the entire region suddenly knows that Someone powerful beyond words has appeared in Gadara.

Another suggestion I found is this: That God Himself intervened in this situation to send a message to pig farmers regarding the law He had instituted about the eating of swine. Here was judgment, publicly executed, on a man who dared not only to eat the product of pigs, but to sell that product to other Jews for their consumption.

Whatever the reason for Jesus “answering the prayer” of a group of demons, we must always remember that if “we pray anything according to His will, He hears us.” Fallen angels teach us that lesson here, loud and clear. It is God’s perfect will that we are after, and that He will have. Let us pray that will, and our prayers will be answered.

As for those demons, their free days will be over soon. Could be that this particular group in the story went to the abyss by way of the Sea of Galilee.